On Friday, January 17, Tenafly High School’s Science Olympiad team participated in the Regional finals of the annual NJ Science Olympiad hosted at Union County College. The New Jersey Science Olympiad—often colloquially called “SciOly” by students—tests students’ knowledge on various topics and fields of science as they engage with in-person simulations and exams on the day of the competition. The students who compete are given an overall placement at the end of the day based on their performances, and schools are also placed based on their students’ rankings on individual categories. Events included Disease Detectives, Microbe Mission, Air Trajectory, and more.
Out of the 24 schools that competed, Tenafly High School placed an impressive overall place of 4th, with the team medaling in seven out of the 13 events available. The positive display marked another string of accomplishments to add to Tenafly’s Science Olympiad team and its continuing success over the last few years.
The result also means that Tenafly is advancing to the State finals tournament, where the team will compete with 27 regional winners across New Jersey on March 11 at Middlesex College. Ultimately, standing out among fierce competition, Tenafly achieved victories at multiple fields.
Here are the results from the Regional finals:
Disease Detectives, 1st Place: Jehee Nam (’27) and Edward Wang (‘26)
Air Trajectory, 2nd Place: Noah Jackson (’26) and Yuval Amitai (’26)
Microbe Mission, 2nd Place: Hillary Xie (’26) and Jehee Nam (’27)
Entomology, 3rd Place: Edmund Hod (’25) and Kiran Muttiah (’26)
Dynamic Planet, 4th Place: Soeun Lee (’27) and Kiran Muttiah (’26)
Tower, 5th Place: Noah Jackson (’26) and Ananjay Anchila (’27)
Helicopter, 6th Place: Noah Jackson (’26) and Yuval Amitai (’26)
The winners expressed positive reactions to their great performance this past Friday.
“I’m pretty satisfied overall about the competition, especially because we medaled in the majority of events we competed in,” Wang, who medaled in two events, said. “For states, we are definitely looking at a tougher competition, since we are competing with the 27 other states qualifiers, which include some very competitive and skilled science olympiad teams. As a team, our goal is to place high at states and hopefully qualify for the national competition.” Wang later added that “the team overall was also very focused ahead of time and many were able to coordinate with their event partners to perform at the best of their ability,” which he believes contributed to their success.
“For me, Science Olympiad is an incredibly rewarding experience,” Lee, who medaled in the Dynamic Planet event, said. “By preparing [for this event], it was easy for me to immerse myself in the topic… As for states, since it offers more events than regionals, I’m looking forward to it and [plan] to uncover new horizons before then. After all, when you’re learning new things, you may feel like you’re not retaining any information, but you’re actually understanding more.”
Though the Science Olympiad team has had great success this past Friday, the team will continue studying in preparation for future competitions. Looking ahead, before it competes at State finals in March, the Science Olympiad team plans to attend a few more invitational competitions taking place at Ivy League universities. Meanwhile, Tenafly’s success displayed at the Regional finals underscores Tenafly High School’s academic achievements and its prospering students and teams at STEM-based clubs.
